Wellbeing

Since my second week of undergraduate classes at the University of Virginia in 2013, I have found a companion in my planner. My beautiful, color-coordinated, perfectly designed planner. I mean, I vividly remember breaking down in ugly tears the day I spilled my coffee on it during my Fourth year, and thinking “how will I survive without my plans?” My social life, my academic needs, my career trajectory and everything else that mattered, including “free time”, was scheduled inside those pages. It was my confidant and my sense of control: I always had a plan.

In the era of body positivity and radical self-love, the notion that “no one can love you until you love yourself” is, for many of us who struggle deeply to love ourselves by virtue of depression, anxiety, or the various other forms of mental illness, an unjust sentencing. At its core, the intention is pure. The modern-day proverb is a call to demand that the love we receive from others is of equal or greater value to the love that we give ourselves.

I’ve never really felt ashamed to sing. My mom sang to me as a kid, and I remember quietly humming along to her rendition of "She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain” nightly. Alongside her soothing voice, I lullabied myself to sleep. I have the same habit as my mom, singing mindlessly while doing various tasks. Even after my siblings and I have all grown up and passed the nursery rhyme phase, it’s never a surprise to hear my mom singing while she’s washing dishes, grading papers, driving, cleaning, or walking the dogs.

A Carolina Chickadee sat at the bird feeder, unable to see through the one-way glass. Though I was unseen on the other side, I would hold my breath anyway. Papa received magazines every month for arbitrary gardening and home tools, and for my granny’s birthday, she specifically asked for a special window bird feeder and a soft toilet lid with carpeted flowers on it. My great-uncle, Kit, had nearly broken the window to get it in, but somehow managed to rig the feeder into place.

As October rolls into motion at UVA, I’m reminded of all the reasons my heart soars when the seasonal clock strikes fall. Yellow leaves on Rugby Road outline the branches they dare to escape from, and Lawn rooms stacked with firewood hint at wiggling toes against crackling fireplaces. The air tastes fresh like bus stop breaths on elementary school mornings and feels crisp like a farmer’s market apple. I’ve always been partial to fall. If the seasons were cups of porridge, I think it’s safe to say that even Goldilocks would be satisfied with autumn.

1. What color sweater are you wearing?

a. Vibrant colors like red or yellow…they are aesthetic af with the falling leaves

b. Neutrals like brown or grey

c. Darker shades like blue or purple or green

d. Black…always black

2. Go-to Starbucks drink?

a. **PSL**

b. Hot chocolate/macchiato/anything warm, really

c. I’m only here for a snack tbh…slide me a cheese danish plz

d. Black coffee…or maybe a tea…and maybe a cookie…

The menstrual cup is intimidating, to say the least. I come from a community in which many believe that somehow tampons can take your virginity and are thus something to fear and be protected from. It’s easy to see how this might conflict with my desire for the relatively more invasive menstrual cup. Fortunately for me, after my mother laughed at me about the idea of the cup, she encouraged me to try one (I’m suspicious she also believed I’d never go through with it). Now I’m a part of the cup cult.

I keep a list of things I want in the notes app on my phone (right below my grocery list and right above late-night ruminations on the failures of my life). Some time ago, I would use this “want” note as a safety blanket or a calming mechanism, relishing in capitalistic promises of a shopping high in the face of immediate stressors like exams and papers.

I completely suck at self-care. And not in a cutesy, humblebrag way or in a self-deprecating way. We just do not get along. It’s to the point where I hear someone exhort the importance of self-care along with suggestions of meditations or face masks, and I roll my eyes to the back of my skull so hard they may pop out from their sockets. My mom is probably forwarding a Tiny Buddha email to me right now, and I’m already moving it to my trash folder without reading it.

The vaginal dilators I had ordered, per the instructions of my physical therapist, arrived at my apartment in a perfectly normal-looking box, as if they weren’t sold by adamandeve.com, a site that has my eternal gratefulness for coming up as “unspecified merchant” on my bank account statement. I kept them under my bed for two weeks, a reincarnated childhood monster that I waited to go away until I couldn’t stand the guilt of leaving sixty dollars’ worth of a medical device under my bed. I opened the box for the first time.